In the wake of depression Aline, intense rains and wind caused damage in the Alpes-Maritimes, after a red alert on Friday October 20 in the morning which revived trauma in the Alpine valleys, three years after the devastation of storm Alex . The department, where all schools were closed on Friday, remained on yellow alert for floods and waves-submersion at the end of the afternoon.
In Saint-Martin-Vésubie, a temporary bridge put in place after storm Alex was submerged and 30 meters of roadway were torn up by the Vésubie, whose flow rate increased from 60 m3 to 200 m3 per second. Two empty buses, parked nearby, were swept away. And the village of Venanson, which has 170 inhabitants, is cut off from the world.
“It’s a bit like a game of goose, we’re going back to square one, it’s sad,” says Ivan Mottet, mayor of the commune of Saint-Martin-Vésubie, which has 1,500 inhabitants, with a sigh. “We expected it, all night it blew, and there we go again,” observes, helplessly, Robert Carrara, a 71-year-old plumber, while the Vésubie, turned brown, tumbles in an impressive flow, outflowing of its bed and forcing the temporary dikes.
According to the prefect, the damage nevertheless remains “incommensurate” with the passage of storm Alex, when the rains reached 500 mm and ravaged the valleys of the hinterland of Nice and Menton, leaving ten dead and eight missing. , and the most significant damage in mainland France since the Second World War.
311 people evacuated
With Aline, the winds reached 120 km/h on the terrain, with gusts to 140 km/h. But the precipitation “only” reached 200 mm in the Vésubie and Roya valleys, detailed the prefect of the department, Hugues Moutouh, in Saint-Martin-de-Vésubie. In total, 311 people were evacuated, including 128 in homes in the valleys which should no longer be inhabited because they were located in a dangerous area, he insisted.
As a precaution, many roads had been cut in the valleys but also along the coast, such as the southern roadway of the Promenade des Anglais in Nice, which has since reopened. The heaviest rains associated with this storm Aline have now moved towards Italy, Météo-France explained in its latest bulletin at midday. Some 2,000 homes were still without power in the afternoon, compared to up to 6,000 at the heart of the event, according to the prefect.
In Ardèche and Drôme, where the wind also blew strongly and forced firefighters to carry out more than sixty interventions, up to 13,000 homes were deprived of electricity and many were still there at mid -day, depending on the two prefectures. Between 150 mm and 200 mm of rain fell, occasionally up to 260 mm, in the west of Ardèche.
Still in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region, gusts of 100 km/h were recorded west of Lyon and 146 km/h in the Ecrins massif (Isère). In Cannes, a breakdown at the Cannes-la-Bocca station caused a suspension of TER traffic. And at Nice airport, the lack of visibility caused delays.
